I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

A lot of the telltale warning signs of impending suckdom in there are actually maybe not so bad – trailers are notorious for making things worse than they are – but there’s one thing that really bugs me. It’s the uniforms. I grant that Michelle Yeoh wasn’t going to wear a miniskirt, but: we know what Pike-era Starfleet uniforms actually look like, and they weren’t like the ones in Discovery. The Starfleet at the time still used color coding — there are, of course, pictures and analysis* — and the uniforms in Discovery look less practical than the ones you see in The Cage/The Menagerie. I find this appalling.

…God help me, I find this appalling. Much more appalling than the lack of miniskirts. I want to yell “But he doesn’t know the territory!” in a plaintively aggrieved voice.

The TRUFANs would squeal like stuck pigs, but with all the shows that are going dark and gritty, Star Trek is the one I want to go there. A captain of a beat up old freighter, outside the protection of the Federation, trying to make his own way? Trying to get along without breaking the law [unlike Firefly], but having difficulty doing so?

It’ll never happen, in this timeline anyway. But, yeah, I liked the idea of Enterprise, but couldn’t stick with it past the first season. I’ll plan on giving this new one a miss, maybe trying to watch it if people I trust start raving about it.

I think I’ve put my finger on what’s bothering me on this. Have you ever seen any of the footage of Geneviève Bujold playing Janeway from the first episode of Voyager? All of the performances in this trailer have the same lack of intensity that she did.

Are those supposed to be Klingons? WTH Also, the number of aliens on that ship compared to the Enterprise crew makes me wonder if something happened in the intervening ten years that cuts out so many species from manning one of the top of the line ships from star fleet. Agree on the uniforms. Overall my guess is the story is going to suffer because of the messages they’ll want to put out. If it survives to a second season it will revamp itself to more adventure. Kind of like Deep Space 9.

It’s kind of funny, actually. Because of reasons, I’ve been looking at various Warhammer 40k stuff. I was looking at some of that just before coming here and seeing this, actually.
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Aesthetically, this looks a lot like 40k to me.

That last guy can sense the coming of death. Let’s ask him if the series will last past the first 14 episdoes.

Doing a pre-prequel seems ill-advised. They’re automatically going to run into continuity problems, simply because technology has overcome many of the limitations that drove Gene Roddenberry to make certain creative choices. Many of those choices have become an integral part of the Star Trek universe, such as the transporter. Also, the original series had that 60s aesthetic. If they tried to duplicate it now, it would look ridiculous to younger viewers. It would also look ridiculous to old people like me.

The problems with “Enterprise” are only going to be compounded in this series. I could see them drifting past the cold, foreboding hulk of the Botany Bay at some point, never realizing that the Fantasy Island guy is in there taking a long nap, just waiting for a chance to jump into more popular, more widely syndicated show.

Roddenberry would probably love it. The thing is, like Lucas, Star Trek triumphed in spite of Roddenberry- not because of him. The culture and the people he surrounded himself with allowed him to create a thing that endured and is still good even today.
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I doubt this will have even a 10th of that shelf life.

This.
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For all of Roddenberry’s Utopianism, the pendulum seems to be swinging WAY into the other direction, past DS9 grimdark, into full on dystopia. I get that’s the spirit of the age, but there is still wonder to be had in the Future Science universe dammit!